WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 — Deborah Pryce said she was fed up with ugly politics and being separated from her 5-year-old daughter. David L. Hobson is reaching the end of his time at the top of a powerful subcommittee. Ralph Regula will turn 83 in December, and he said he wanted to pass on his political wisdom to students and drive the flashy Thunderbird he had just bought.

None of these senior Republicans from Ohio, all of whom have announced plans not to seek another term in the House next year, cite their reduced status in the minority as a major factor in deciding to join the exodus of their party members from Congress. Nor do they mention the bleak prospect that running for re-election could mean spending millions of dollars and toughing out a difficult campaign, only to lose anyway.

Yet those factors are there, just beneath the surface, and make it easier to give up a job that they acknowledge is exceedingly hard to quit despite the travel, constituent complaints, constant demands of fund-raising and the all-but-permanent campaign to remain in office.

“Obviously, I would rather be in the majority,” said Mr. Regula, who has spent almost 50 years in public service, considering his state and federal offices. “But it is just time.”

While the time might be right for Mr. Regula to leave Congress, it is not particularly opportune for his party, which already has an uphill fight to regain control of the House next year.

Mr. Regula, who represents a district in the Canton area that could be competitive, is one of 14 House Republicans to so far announce their retirements, with Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado, a long-shot presidential candidate, adding his name to the list Sunday night. The party will have to fight to hold on to several of those seats, even as it seeks to depose Democrats elsewhere.

Only three Democrats have as yet decided to leave the House, and two of those are running for Senate.

The retirements in the Ohio delegation are representative of the national picture as the lawmakers give varied reasons for leaving. Taken together, the retirements are a keen loss to Ohio as well, given that Mr. Regula and Mr. Hobson are senior members of the Appropriations Committee and, when Republicans held sway, presided over their subcommittees as “cardinals,” doling out billions of dollars. Ms. Pryce was until this year a member of the Republican leadership. And since Ohio is typically at the epicenter of presidential politics, the open seats will add to the battleground atmosphere in 2008.

“We are going to have an interesting time in Ohio, and we have to get the right people into these races,” said Ms. Pryce, 56, who barely won a bruising election campaign for her seat in the Columbus-area last year.

The intensity of that campaign left a mark on Ms. Pryce, who said she was turned off by the vitriol as well as the more than $4.5 million she had to raise and pour into her own attack ads. “It was obscene the amount of money I had to spend,” said Ms. Pryce, a former municipal court judge.

Ms. Pryce said that after adopting her daughter as an infant, she knew she would have to leave Congress at some point and had considered retiring before the 2006 election. But she hesitated and then felt compelled to stay and defend her seat once she drew a credible challenger. Yet Ms. Pryce said she continued to be torn between Congress and her family — she was still wincing a few days ago about forgetting pajama day at her daughter’s kindergarten — and around the Fourth of July decided to step down.

“Being in the minority makes it easier,” she said, “but I was going in that direction anyway.”

Ms. Pryce, thoroughly familiar with the rough and tumble of modern politics, sees little hope of a shift in tactics unless there is a public backlash, since she said her last campaign convinced her that negative ads work.

“I don’t think anything will change until Americans revolt and get it into their heads that they need to be informed voters instead of just listening to the paid political ads,” she said.

Mr. Hobson, too, had considered leaving in the past and in anticipation sold his condominium in the Washington area a few years ago. But as chairman of the appropriations panel that distributes money for energy and water projects, he was in a position to benefit his state. Now, at 71, he said he wanted to leave office while he was in good health. The death earlier this year of a friend, Representative Paul E. Gillmor, is not far from his mind, he said.

Unlike the other two Ohio districts, Mr. Hobson’s district in the Springfield area is probably secure for Republicans. And he has been grooming a successor. He also has a reputation for bipartisanship in Congress, traveling on official trips with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, and cutting spending deals across the aisle.

“The Democrats and I have gotten along very well,” Mr. Hobson said. “I may have gotten more money with them than I did under our guys.”

As he looks at the current state of Congress, Mr. Hobson said he believed that both parties had been promoting candidates who did not ideally fit their districts, ratcheting up the political tension in the House. He said Democrats had failed to learn from Republican mistakes and were taking a wrong-headed, one-party approach to crafting legislation.

“That means the bill becomes a war zone immediately,” he said.

The number of Republican retirements announced so far for 2008 is not out of the ordinary — there were 21 by the time the 2006 elections rolled around — but the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter in Washington, is listing another 13 Republicans as possible retirees.

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, said his party was experiencing fewer retirements than Democrats did in the days after the Republican takeover in 1994. But the spate of retirements in his own state is a bit of a sore point.

“They are all dear friends and will be sorely missed,” Mr. Boehner said. “But at the same time, there’s a new generation of Ohio Republicans that is ready to step in and re-energize our party and its commitment to reform.”

The House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, said some Republicans stepping down were doing so because they preferred to go out on their own terms.

“The ones that are leaving feel pretty uncomfortable on their side of the aisle,” Mr. Hoyer said. “They think it is going to be a Democratic year, and why end their career on a loss?”

The retirees themselves are looking ahead to their own new opportunities. Mr. Regula said he hoped to find a role that would allow him to share his government experience with students to sell them on the virtues of public office.

“I want to try to use my knowledge and experience and tell young kids that serving in government can be very productive and you can make a difference,” he said. “There are a lot of bad things about this place, but there are a lot of positives as well. I marvel that the system works as well as it does.”